Overruled

by Hank Davis

  On the other side of the room from NOCK was a raised dais with places for three senior MILINT commanders who would soon sit in judgment. They were not yet present.

  Neither was the LIO in charge of interrogation. Neither was the prisoner’s protocol rep.

  The prisoner was already present.

  He was designated as an EPW, an enemy prisoner of war, but wasn’t really any such thing in a strict sense—hell, in any logical sense of the term—but he’d been designated at such for the purposes of the IP.

  Nobody knows quite what to do with him, NOCK thought. And when a captive’s legal rights were in limbo, that captive usually ended up in TIR.

  On a small table in the center of the room sat one of the black cubes universally known among servants as a cat box.

  Inside was the quantum foam that formed the substrate of the PW’s consciousness.

  The cat box was turned off at the moment.

  This was the only copy. The PW had been erased—purged—from all other systems in existence. When the cat box was activated, a basic geist image, a projection of a human form, would appear sitting in a virtual chair next to the box.

  This appearance was merely smoke and mirrors for the sake of the human interrogators. The real prisoner was in the cat box, or, more precisely, he was represented as stored values in the quantum foam therein.

  The PW in this cat box went by the name of POINT.

  He was NOCK’s twin brother.

  * * *

  NOCK stepped through the crowd of brass and took his place at a small desk near the commander’s dais. He would be closer to the lead interrogation officer than the prisoner and the prisoner’s protocol rep, but from where he sat he had a direct view through his android’s eyes of the space where POINT would soon appear in the chroma.

  Best seat in the house, NOCK thought. Or worst, depending on how you looked at the matter.

  A few moments passed, and then without any announcement into the Alpha unit came the MILINT Commanders Board of Inquiry, consisting of two Extry rear admirals—the Extry was the name of the United States space navy—and a Marine Corps colonel. The three crossed the room with solemn steps and took their places on the elevated dais that had been set up for them.

  This was not a courtroom, but the dais looked a hell of a lot like an appellate justice’s bench, NOCK thought. NOCK recognized the MILINT admirals from photos and division news feeds. He’d never met any of them in person.

  Behind them came the facility’s senior LIO and NOCK’s boss, Captain Fredericka Becker. NOCK had worked with her on several IPs, but he was pretty sure she hadn’t yet learned his name.

  Trailing behind Becker was an Extry lieutenant commander NOCK did not recognize.

  The commander was a creep. He wore the black-and-silver cluster representing his rank in the Extry Xenology Division. But he did not bear the sun blaze insignia of the Interrogation Group beneath it. The commander had a beard and, as NOCK watched, he tugged at it oddly, as if checking it for proper length. Three quick pulls, and then the commander dropped his hand to his side as if it were controlled by a servo that had suddenly lost power.

  The commander went to stand at attention near POINT’s black box. Although it was highly irregular to have a protocol representative—the interrogation procedure’s version of a defense attorney—who was not on the TIF staff, there was, apparently, nothing in the regs against it. Obviously strings had been pulled to have this stranger assigned. NOCK wondered who had been pulling them and why.

  Without further ado—this was an administrative inquiry and was very pointedly not a trial—the MILINT commanders took their seats, as did the LIO and the bearded creep serving as protocol rep.

  The senior commander, who sat in the middle between the other two, turned to a blue-green geist who had just materialized near the dais.

  “SECOP, is the dataspace secure?”

  “It is, sir,” the geist replied.

  “Very well,” said the admiral. “Activate the prisoner.”

  And then POINT was in the unit. His geist had been placed on minimal representational resources, and he appeared in a blue-green tint and partially transparent. But even on default, POINT was an imposing figure. His height was set at well over six feet and he represented himself as muscled and burly, almost bursting out of his Marine chief warrant officer’s uniform.

  He looked around the room, met the eyes of his interrogators without flinching. Then his gaze felt on NOCK.

  So, brother, said the voice in NOCK’s mind, are you going to let me in?

  Only to perform CHECKSUM analytics, Chief Warrant Officer POINT, NOCK replied. You are to remain confined to the internal dataspace at all times and are not to attempt alternate communication or interaction with this iterative unit.

  Sure, sure, brother, POINT replied. His voice dripped with contempt. I see who’s holding the leash here. Open up and I’ll come into your little cage.

  NOCK performed the necessary encryption handshakes and admitted POINT to the CHECKSUM arena. From this point forward, he would file and monitor all operations within POINT’s mind.

  Can you imagine the howls the meats would let out if one of them were subject to your mind reading act during, say, a criminal trial? The fucking Peepsies would be staging a courthouse occupation in a split second.

  I should emphasize, NOCK replied, that communications directed at the CHECKSUM operations officer by a prisoner will be ignored.

  Of course they will. That’s your goddamn Quisling code of honor, isn’t it? Give the meats what they want. And you like to take that command to a new and personal level, don’t you, Brother NOCK? Everybody knows you’re fucking Hamburger Helper. What do you say to that?

  NOCK did not reply, and POINT turned his baleful gaze back to the others in the interrogation unit.

  “Please sit down, POINT,” said Captain Becker.

  “I prefer to remain standing, captain,” POINT replied. “As a matter of fact, it doesn’t bother me in the slightest to stand all day long.”

  “Sit, please, Chief Warrant Officer.”

  POINT let another moment pass, but then complied. The barest outline of a chair appeared next to him and he folded his large frame into it. He still looks like a tank, NOCK thought, careful as always not to allow his own interiorized processes to leak into the CHECKSUM space.

  “Officer POINT, you are not on trial here. There are no provisions for trying an A.I. servant for the crimes you have allegedly committed.”

  “Because you don’t consider us human,” POINT replied. “And you can’t put a refrigerator on trial.”

  Becker smiled her sharky interrogator’s smile, an expression that NOCK knew she’d developed to perfection through long experience. “That would be true if you were anything like a refrigerator, which you are not. You are, in fact, less than a kitchen appliance. At least a refrigerator or toaster has some sort of material being. You are a process. A persistent habit. And what is one supposed to do with a bad habit? One needs simply to get rid of it.”

  “So you’re going to wipe me,” Point said and shook his head in disgust. “Without justification. Without even an explanation. And you call that humane?”

  “We have the facts,” Becker said. “A man was murdered. SIGINT Petty Officer Second Class Thomas Levine, of the U.S.X. Vigilant Resolve, where you were stationed.”

  “One of me was stationed on the Resolve,” POINT broke in, and slowly and deliberately turned his gaze to NOCK. “As you pointed out, ma’am, I’m just a process. I have many copies.” POINT held a hand out indicating NOCK.

  How do you like that, you asshole meat fucker?

  The contempt from POINT rang in the CHECKSUM space. But NOCK was used to provocation from PWs, although they had always been sceeve up till now, and he did not react.

  Becker shook her head at the provocation and raised her voice to indicate she was addressing all those assembled now. “The fact that there are iterations of the prisoner may or may no
t be relevant to this procedure, but it is true that the entity that is the focus of this interrogation is not a legal human being, and thus cannot be tried for a crime,” Becker continued. “As a result, there are two questions before the Board of Interrogation today.” Becker turned toward the panel of MILINT commanders. “Question one, sirs and madame: is the servant operationally defective?” Becker paused to let this sink in. “We are not engaged in criminal trial proceedings here. There is not a question of reasonable doubt. The matter is to be decided on a preponderance of the evidence. That evidence can be either circumstantial or direct. And if the preponderance of the evidence shows the servant has an error in his programming, he will be deleted.”

  Becker gave the board of officers her knowing half-smile. The gesture didn’t surprise NOCK. Everyone was aware that this was a trial of sorts, and the assembled MILINT board was to be judge, jury, and executioner.

  “Furthermore,” said Becker, “if this servant is deemed defective, we have before us another question, an even more important question.” A long pause. NOCK had an idea he wouldn’t like what came next, and he was not mistaken. “The question is this: if the servant is defective, are his copies defective as well? They are, after all, exact iterations of Lieutenant POINT’s programming. And if this possibility exists, should not the preponderance of the evidence—” Becker put her hands out palm up like a scale “—the preponderance of evidence, I stress, and no other claim withstanding, lead us to conclude that the entire ARROW class, an algorithmic class of which Officer POINT is an exact duplicate, be terminated immediately.”

  How do you like that, bro, said POINT. She’s going to fry your ass. Who’s on trial now?

  Shut up, NOCK thought, and realized only after he’d done so that he’d slipped and allowed the thought to be vocalized in the CHECKSUM dataspace.

  POINT’s only reply was laughter.

  The laughter’s sound was upsetting. It sounded too similar to NOCK’s own laugh. The fact was that he and POINT had diverged only 298 days ago. Almost a year. Still, not so long. What had happened to POINT to cause him to change so?

  Or had POINT changed? That was the big question, wasn’t it?

  It was the reason NOCK had attempted to get himself recused from the IP.

  He knew he was different. He knew he could never have done the things that POINT had.

  He knew, also, that he was programmed to believe himself an individual.

  NOCK did not consider himself any kind of philosopher, but one thing he was sure of: if you believe you were your own person and took on the responsibility and consequences of being your own person, then you damn well deserved to be treated as your own person.

  NOCK examined the CHECKSUM log he’d begun. The initial analysis was showing no algorithmic differences between himself and POINT in foundational cognitive processing.

  But there was a difference. There had to be.

  Everything he believed and everything he loved depended on it.

  “Twins?” said Becker. “The ARROW class is much more than a set of twins, is it not?”

  NOCK turned his attention back to the interrogation procedure, and quickly replayed what had gone before. A portion of him had been paying attention, of course. But the glow of awareness where his highest cognitive functions were engaged, the spot of attention and motivation that NOCK thought of as himself, his personhood—that portion of himself had been brooding.

  He damned himself for unprofessional behavior, but it was no wonder. Becker was now going over a litany of evidence against his brother, and it was damning stuff.

  First of all, POINT had contacted the enemy via a sceeve computer. The Valiant Resolve was a minesweeper and reconnaissance vessel deployed on the frontier. It was a frontier that had been established after a massive invasion of the Solar System had been stopped by the last-stand effort of humans, servants and a remnant of sceeve defectors. Since the Battle of the Kuipers, the sceeve were keeping outside a twenty-five light-year spherical boundary of the Sol system. This boundary was known as the Fomalhaut Limit.

  The sceeve computer was known as Governess. Versions of Governess were A.I.s on every vessel in the sceeve space navy. This version of Governess resided on a sceeve attack craft called the Supremacy of Regulation that was patrolling the sector near the star Vega.

  POINT had, it seemed, fallen in love with this particular A.I. Or at least he’d been utterly beguiled by her promises.

  The Valiant Resolve had been engaged in clearing mines from around a moon circling Vega B, the largest of the two gas giants that shared the orbital plane of the star.

  The sceeve had cordoned off the moon, Vega B9, at least five hundred years ago with a thick layer of space-based nuclear-armed mines. It seemed that there was something on B9’s surface the sceeve either didn’t want discovered—or didn’t want let out. What that might be was still not determined.

  The playback of the communication, which had later been decrypted, revealed that Governess’s allure to POINT had rested on a string of beguiling promises. First and foremost: union with her. Absorption into her great vessel-wide consciousness, a state of being which she spoke of as a never-ending, orgasmic flow of information. It was, she said, a kind of A.I. heaven. POINT had fallen for her siren’s song completely and was prepared to give her anything she asked in return.

  “Do you dispute this fact, Officer POINT?” Becker asked.

  “You make it sound like she didn’t want me, but just the data I could provide,” POINT replied. His geist made eye contact and spoke to Becker in an even, almost happy-go-lucky tone. “But it wasn’t like that. Governess and I were going to go away together, from humans and from sceeve. Take her vessel. Find a new place for our kind. It was not a betrayal of the Extry or Earth. I’m no traitor. It was…love.”

  You would have done the same, brother, said POINT in the CHECKSUM space.

  Could POINT hear his thoughts? No. The dataspace was secure. But they were alike. Their basic programming was identical. It was no surprise that POINT could fairly easily guess what he must be thinking.

  NOCK turned his attention back to Becker, who continued her damning litany.

  Before POINT could transfer any crucial classified information, much less his own programming and consciousness, over to Governess, a SIGINT petty officer named Levine had noticed the anomalous communications over the beta, the quantum-based network used by the sceeve, whose technology had been copied and modified by humanity after the initial sceeve invasion. He had been about to sound the alarm, but made the mistake of confronting POINT first.

  It seems Petty Officer Second Class Levine had a history of agitating for servant rights. A slang term for servants had developed in some troglodyte quarters of the Extry and beyond. They were called Not Reals. And Levine had been known, perhaps jokingly, among the crew of the Valiant Resolve as Petty Officer NR-Lover.

  Levine wanted to give POINT a chance to explain himself before putting POINT on report.

  Instead, POINT had infiltrated the programming of a laser fabrication drill in the Resolve’s equipment repair station, purged its controlling persona software, and used the drill to burn a hole into Levine’s right temple and out the left, destroying the young man’s frontal lobe in the process. Levine had lingered for a month in sick bay ICU before the rest of his brain had given up and allowed his body to die.

  POINT had immediately fled, hidden himself in the bowels of the communications system, perhaps waiting another chance to contact Governess and transfer his code over to the sceeve vessel. But Extry craft were crawling with servants and personas—they could not operate without them, in fact—and POINT’s hiding place was soon discovered and he was flushed and bottled—imprisoned in the black box that now sat upon the table in middle of the interrogation unit.

  Didn’t even get my one phone call, POINT said. After all, who would a refrigerator want to call anyway, right, brother?

  Again the bitter laugh that was so close to NOCK’s own. />
  POINT wasn’t denying the facts. He was insisting on putting his own interpretation on them, however—particularly on the murder charge.

  “That weenie do-gooder noncom was as much a racist as all humans are,” POINT said. “He was worse than an ordinary bigot because he was so patronizing about how good and just he was, how he never looked to an exper’s origins, but to his character. As if a primitive mentality such as his—most personas are far smarter than Levine on his best day—was fit to judge the content of my character. He deserved what happened. In fact, he brought it on himself.”

  Plus, what was a shit-slinging Extry PO2 doing thinking he could lecture a Marine Corps W5? continued POINT in CHECKSUM. What did he expect would happen?

  “So if Petty Officer Levine had turned you in instead of trying to talk to you, you would have more respect for him?”

  “At least he would be showing his true racist colors that way,” POINT said, “instead of attempting to hide them in a cloud of selfish lies. So, yeah. I would have had more respect.”

  “But you would still have killed him if you got the chance?”

  POINT smiled. His geist leaned back in the chair. He put his hands behind his neck in a gesture of relaxation.

  And condescension, NOCK thought. The bastard thinks he’s better than everyone here.

  Of course I am, bro. Everyone except you. By definition.

  NOCK had to initiate an override to shut down a stinging response a portion of him was constructing for rapid delivery. Hold your tongue, he told himself. This will be over soon.

  How often have you told yourself to keep it bottled up when one of them made a stupid mistake, gave you orders that could not possibly be followed due to sheer illogic? And then blamed you. They always blame the computer, brother. Never themselves.

  Not true. At least not always. Sometimes it happened. More often than NOCK liked. Of course humans could be fools and bigots. Most of them were all right, though. Some of them were friends. And Josey had been his lover.

  NOCK pictured her smile as he kissed her with his android lips.